Continuity and Change in Agriculture in the Parish of Borrisoleigh

The Borrisoleigh Historical Society hosted a lecture in the Community Centre, Borrisoleigh on 26th March 2014. The title of the Lecture was "Continuity and Change in Agriculture in the Parish of Borrisoleigh". It was delivered by Borrisoleigh native, Professor Gerry Boyle, Director of Teagasc. This lecture gave a great insight into the past and present methods of farming.

Transcript of "Continuity and Change in Agriculture in the Parish of Borrisoleigh"

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Introduction
I am very grateful for the invitation to address the Borrisoleigh Historical Society this
evening. This is the second occasion that I’ve spoken publically in this fabulous new
facility. I remember it affectionately as Mrs Leahy’s shop – Mrs Leahy was always
generous in filling our orders for the penny's worth of sweets.
I am speaking here this evening under a false pretext because, first of all, I’m not a
historian. My talk this evening is a blend of recent historical and geographically-
based trends in farming practices in the parish of Borrisoleigh. The focus in the
paper is very much on the underlying social and economic factors that drive change
in farming. I want to also explain at the outset that this paper is very much a joint
effort with my colleague, Dr David Meredith, who has joined me here this evening.
David is an outstanding researcher specialising in the field of rural development and
change.
While this paper focuses on the role of agriculture in the parish, it is important to
appreciate that agriculture plays a vitally important role in the health of the entire
local economy.
Nationally agriculture is worth about €2.6b. to the economy each year and employs
about 120,000 with another 50,000 employed in processing. The indirect effects are
even more important, especially in local areas (farm purchases and sales to marts
and factories, etc.) Every €1,000 of agricultural income generates a total income of
€2,500 through these “upstream and downstream” effects and most of this stays in
the local area – a similar effect applies to job creation.

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The ICT and Pharma sectors tend to be extolled as engines of economic growth but
they are not as important to the economy as agriculture. Every €100m. of exports
from agriculture contributes about €50m. to national income compared with €19m.
from the Pharma and ICT sectors.
Drivers of change in agriculture
Farming in Borrisoleigh has been shaped by a number of high-level processes that
are evident across Ireland, much of Europe and other industrialised countries.
 Consolidation: Fewer larger farms
 Intensification: Enhancing productivity (per Ha, per Animal or both)
 Specialisation: Concentrating on a particular enterprise.
At the farm level a number of other, interrelated, developments have affected these
processes, most notably:
 Long term decline in the real price of food
 Increasing off-farm employment (income)
 Farm succession (or lack thereof).
Taken together, these processes have shaped the restructuring of farm enterprises
in the Borrisoleigh area. As I will show through the use of various indicators covering
a 30 year period from 1981 to 2011, restructuring has led to changes in the size,
composition and type of farming that takes place in the Parish. These changes
reflect, in large part, the evolving exigencies of farming in Ireland. Farm enterprises
have to continually navigate changes to the technology of farming, the policy
environment that govern how food is produced and the increasing role of the global
market in determining food prices. These drivers of change operate within the
context of structural, environmental, human and capital constraints which, in turn, are
filtered through and conditioned by social and cultural institutional structures, e.g. the
family, community and the wider industry. These institutional structures have proven
resilient, but not immune to change. What we see, therefore, is a sector that is
characterised by continuity and change. Continuity is ensured through social and
behavioural norms which facilitate certain types of change, e.g. renting out land or
changing from dairy to beef production, but are resistant to others, e.g. selling
farmland or planting forestry. There is a question as to whether these norms are
location or place based, i.e. do they vary between localities or (bio-physical) regions.
Research in other jurisdictions, that has focused on different industries, has
established that this is the case but, as yet, research in Ireland has yet to engage
with this particular issue.

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Within this presentation we will focus on the 30 year period covering 1981 to 2011.
The emphasis is on assessing the extent of local level changes and contrasting
these with developments in the rest of North Tipperary.
The first part of the presentation covers changes to farms and farming systems. The
second part of the presentation discusses these trends and developments in light of
the current structure of farm households and some of the key challenges facing
farmers in Ireland.
In the paper we draw on three data sources to track changes in farming in the Parish
as follows:
 Census of Agriculture, CSO, every 10 years, since 1991 available at
the parish level but comparable data only for 2000 and 2010
 Census of Population, CSO, every 5 years and gives data on farm
size at parish level from 1981 but these data are not available since
2002 due to confidentiality issues
 Places of Work, CSO, this source of data allows us to track
demographic changes in farming at the parish level
Until comparatively recently it was not possible to conduct such analysis at this level
as follow. We define the parish as the aggregate of the Electoral District (EDs) of
Glankeen, Borrisoleigh and parts of Upperchurch and Gortkelly (14 townlands).
One of the most enduring trends that affects farming systems everywhere is the fact
that year in year out the relative price of food has declined. The basic explanation as
to why the ratio of food prices to the price of production inputs has fallen over several
decades is that the supply of food products, taking one year with another, largely due
to the pace of technological change, tends to outstrip the demand for food. This
universal structural feature of agricultural production in turn creates huge pressures
for change within agriculture. This pressure has been graphically referred to as being
akin to a “treadmill” effect. Farmers everywhere have to “run to stand still”. Faced
with ever declining real prices in order to maintain income levels they must either
increase the size of their operation, improve their levels of productivity, become more
specialised,
change
enterprise or
leave the
sector either
entirely or
partially by
selling or
renting their
farms.

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A major driver of change that’s closely related to price developments is of course the
relative income position of farm enterprises (see chart). Other things being equal we
would expect the farm enterprise with the relatively highest income to exhibit the
fastest growth. Of course not all things are equal and the existence of the dairy quota
has affected the agricultural landscape profoundly for the past 30 years. All that of
course is subject to change in April of next year.
I am now going
to take you
through a
series of slides
that exhibit
changes in the
pattern of
farming in the
Parish in terms
of the number
and size of
farms.
Consolidation: changes in the number and size of farms
The number of farms in the Parish declined by 45% (-113) over the 30 years in
question (1981 – 2011). The decline in the rest of North Tipperary was 40%. There
are now a little under 80 farms in the Parish.

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The rate of change has varied over time. The process of farm consolidation was
relatively slow throughout the 30 years covered by this analysis. Rapid consolidation
occurred in the earlier part of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ period, 1996-2002. The most recent
period, 2006 – 2011, has seen the level of farm consolidation tailing off. This is a
response to a number of factors, including the age structure of the farm population. It
is also related to CAP measures and schemes that linked farm payments to land
holding.
The spatial pattern of changes to farm numbers is mixed. In the south and west of
the Parish there has been a significant percentage decline in the number of farms up
to 22% whereas there has been a corresponding increase in the east of the Parish.
The
comparison of
2000 and 2010
data needs to
be treated with
some caution
due to
differences in
the way these
data were
collected and
the way in
which farms

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were defined.
Notwithstanding this caveat, the variability in change at the ED level, some
witnessing increases and some experiencing decreases, suggests that the changes
are not simply the consequence of different definitions.
It is possible that proximity or accessibility to rural towns in the east of the parish has
resulted in an increase in the number of (small) farms, i.e. by people combining farm
and off-farm employment. Declining farm numbers in the west might be associated
with consolidation of dairy farms.
The small change in overall farm numbers in recent years is misleading as there
were substantial changes in the size and structure of farm enterprises over the
period as demonstrated in the next sequence of slides. What we see is a general
decline in the number of mid-sized farms and, particularly, specialist dairy producers.
These trends are offset by an increase in the number of both small and large farms
and, from a farm system perspective, the number of specialist beef producers. This
is a feature of farm enterprise trends for many years and affects, in particular,
smaller dairy enterprises or dairy enterprises with a relatively small land platform.
Many of these producers transition to beef production over the course of a number of
years. This tendency is influenced both by policy factors, such as the dairy quota
system and by demographic factors, especially the age of farmers.
The lack of data for 2006 and 2011 is due to the relatively small number of farms in
these farm-size categories at the ED level. The CSO does not release any
information that might result in the identification of individual farms.
The larger farm group has increased its share of all farms over the period (from
about 70% to 80%). This is in line with national (and international) trends.
Interestingly, smaller farms have also increased their share of the total.

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Mid-sized
farms have
experienced a
decline for the
following
reasons:
 Progression into the larger size group
 ‘Regression’ to the smaller farm group. This suggests the sale of land
(fragments) but the retention of the home place.
Change in enterprise specialisation
We now look at changes in the degree of enterprise specialisation in regard to dairy,
beef and sheep farms.
We see a significant change in the prevalence of specialist dairy farms in the parish
as a whole. This trend is due to two general factors. First, it’s a function of the more
demanding labour requirements on dairy farms which tends to result in a transition to
less labour-intensive farming systems as farmers get older. Second, the increased
size of farms would probably have resulted in more dairy activity, save for the
existence of the dairy quota. To the extent that the quota is an explanatory factor we
may well see a reversal of these trends following the abolition of the quota next year.

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There is clearly an east-west divide in the parish in terms of the relative importance
of specialist dairy farms. In the east of the parish between 32% and 39% of farms
were classified as specialist dairy farms in 2000. The prevalence in the western side
of the parish was somewhat higher.
By 2010 there
is a remarkable
reduction in
specialist dairy
farms right
across the
parish to a
prevalence of
less than 14%.
We now
examine the
trends in the
main
alternative farm
enterprises in
the Parish,
namely beef
and sheep.

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A counterpart
to the
dramatic fall
off in
specialist
dairy farms is
an increase in
specialist beef
farms (most
likely suckling
systems). We
note a change
in prevalence
right across
the Parish
from about
33% in 2000
to 65% in
Glankeen just
10 years later.

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In spatial terms the east and south east of the Parish had the highest prevalence in
2000 at between 53% and 65%. In the west of the Parish the prevalence was much
lower at between 28% and 43%.
By 2010 specialist beef farms accounted for between 66% and 79% of all farms in
the east and south of the Parish. In the west of the Parish was prevalence is
between 53% and 65%.
The other
important
grass-based
enterprise is
sheep,
although its
absolute
prevalence is
substantially
less than either
dairy or beef
farming. It will
be also noted
that sheep
farming is
practiced only
sporadically in
the Parish. It is
apparent that there has been a substantial reduction in sheep farming over the last
decade or so.
In 2000 sheep
production was
only evident in
the west and
south of the
Parish, albeit at
a low level of
between 5%
and 7%.
By 2010 while
the overall
prevalence of

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the sheep
enterprise
has
significantly
reduced in
the Parish,
there was
actually a
small
resurgence
in sheep
farming in the west of the Parish.
The sequence
of maps has
demonstrated
that what we
are seeing is
increasing
geographical
specialisation
e.g. areas are
increasingly
typified by one
particular type
of farm
enterprise. This
trend is a
response to a
number of
different
drivers, for example
 increasing economies of scale in the dairy sector,
 ageing of farm operators,
 absence of successors on some farms, and
 availability of off farm employment.

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The shift towards more extensive farming enterprises will have affected the
prosperity of not only farmers themselves but also the upstream and downstream
businesses that are dependent on farming. Purchasing power would have been
boosted by off-farm employment opportunities in the “Celtic Tiger” years but in the
last 5 years this ‘safety valve’ did not exist.
Demographic changes in farming
Another important driver of change is demography. Next we contrast the age
structure of farmers in the Parish with the national picture.
By 2011 about
50% of farmers
in the Parish
were aged 60
years and
more. This had
increased from
a little over
30% just five
years earlier.
The
corresponding
national figure
for 2011 is
about 30% and
the increase in
this age
bracket is much lower in the country as a whole than in the Parish.
The absence of successors on farms could lead to greater levels of consolidation,
either through land sales or, more likely, land renting.
The coming years will, necessarily, see the transfer of land to younger
holders/farmers. Remarkably, the CSO data from 2011 tells us that there are less
than 20 farmers in the parish below 40 years of age.
The household structure of the farm population in the parish reflects the elderly age
profile of farmers. 39% of household comprise either those living alone or
households without children (empty nests). The national figure is 32%.

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There are twenty farm households with children over the age of 19 and 21 with
children under 19 years of age.
For every
female farmer
in 2011 in the
Parish there
were 12 male
farmers.
Nationally the
figure was
about 10.
Female
farmers are in
general older
than their male
counterparts.
This generally
reflects the transfer of land to female spouses on the death of their partners.
In many places, female land holders rent out substantial parts of their farm land.
Within the Parish we see a ratio of females to males of between 1:15 and 1:20 in the
east and a ratio of 1:10 and 1:14 in the west.

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Discussion: continuity and change
Though farming in the area has transformed over the past three decades through
limited consolidation and substantial specialisation, in other respects it remains
largely unchanged. Family ownership, management and operation of the land/farm
remains at the heart of farming in Borris-Isleigh. The continuity of ownership and,
particularly, operation of land remains largely unchanged – it was and remains the
preserve of family farms. The practice of farming the land through the exploitation of
the strengths of family ties ensure the continuity of behaviours, norms and practices
that produce the landscape that frames our sense of place and community identity.
These practices are not impervious to change as we’ve seen. The relatively slow
pace of change in farming is set against a fast changing economic and climatic
environment.
The coming years will see farm businesses and by extension, farm households,
more exposed than ever to the vagaries of the market place. This will, most likely,
drive further farm consolidation and specialisation.
The abolition of the milk quota next year will, more than likely, accelerate the pace of
change. Much of this consolidation is likely, certainly in the short term, to occur
through the rental market. Social change resulting from farm succession and land
ownership will also prompt different or new approaches to farming, e.g. collaborative
farming.
The theme of this paper has been about continuity and change. The best indicator of
continuity in farming in the Parish is the pattern of surnames in the Parish as
revealed by the 1911 census. In the first of the next two charts we exhibit the
distribution of surnames in the ED of Borrisoleigh. In the second chart we present a
word cloud of the surnames which depicts the frequency of surnames in the ED. In
both charts it is evident that little has changed in over a hundred years in the
ownership of land at any rate.

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Finally, in our research for this paper we could only find one reference to Borrisoleigh
in the National Cultural Heritage Database. We nonetheless thought it was worth
presenting.